


the same three chords

by nutellamuffin



Series: give your life to music [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Heartbreak, Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Plans For The Future, Remus Lupin Needs a Hug, Sad Ending, Song: Worry (Mother Mother), Songfic, but this song makes me feel things, it's ok i cried too, they really don't deserve this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:55:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27621683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nutellamuffin/pseuds/nutellamuffin
Summary: sirius is staring at the stars etched into the wood of remus’ four poster’s ceiling when the words leave his lips before he thinks about them. “what d’you think is waiting for us, out there?”“not sure.” before sirius can interject, remus continues, “what doyouthink, pads?”
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans (mentioned), Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Series: give your life to music [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2089209
Kudos: 18





	the same three chords

**Author's Note:**

> this drabble's song is "worry" by mother mother.

_ ( baby, don’t you worry ) _

_ ( i’m not lonely, i’m just alone ) _

__

sirius is staring at the stars etched into the wood of remus’ four poster’s ceiling when the words leave his lips before he thinks about them. “what d’you think is waiting for us, out there?”

his boyfriend is quiet, quieter than he has been for the past twenty minutes while he buries his nose in  _ interview with a vampire _ , (his mother got him that as a gag gift, sirius knew, because she was not from sirius’ world, she was from a part of remus’ that sirius would never know,) and sirius worries for a moment that he won’t say anything at all.

“not sure.” so he  _ didn’t _ say anything. before sirius can interject, remus continues, “what do  _ you _ think, pads?”

sirius hums as he swings his legs over the side of the bed and is suddenly much closer to remus than he thinks remus would’ve liked, but there’s a flash of redness in his cheeks that is sirius’ favourite thing, and so he doesn’t move. he grins, all teeth, right in remus’ face, which makes remus put his book down. “are you ready?”

“merlin, i hope so.”

sirius cracks his knuckles, clears his throat, and starts painting the room with his vision of the future. “pads and lily are going to marry like sweethearts do as soon as we’re out of here, and are gonna run off and get a cottage somewhere like in the books. and wormy will probably follow along, i don’t know, i’m not too worried about him-”

remus laughs from somewhere beside him- he must’ve moved while sirius was talking- and sirius drops his hands into his lap and catches his canine smile out of the corner of his eye before he continues.

“and i’ll probably join the ministry, become the most successful auror in the world! they’ll write my name down in those boring books you read, rem. only they’re not going to be as boring now that i’m in them. and you and i will get a house together somewhere, and hang up fairy lights everywhere so it’s never dark, and it’ll be cozy and warm, even in summer, because i know you like that. and you-”

sirius trails off and notices the energy in the room has changed. he looks over, and remus is no longer smiling; he’s looking out the window with some kind of hint in his eyes of something sirius doesn’t like to see, and sirius’ voice dies in his throat just as remus finds his own.

“and i-? what about me, sirius?”

if sirius thought he didn’t like to see the hint of whatever it was in remus’ eyes, he certainly isn’t ready for when remus looks back at him and he’s staring it in the face. he can only look back at him for a moment before clearing his throat and looking down at his hands.

“haven’t gotten to that part yet.”

remus says nothing.

__

_ ( baby, don’t you worry ) _

_ ( i’m not angry, i’m just throwing stones ) _

__

sirius notices that remus is different after their talk about the future, and he doesn’t know how to bring it up without seeing that look in remus’ eyes again. so he doesn’t bring it up, instead, he sits beside him on the common room couch when no one else is there, and apologizes in a quiet voice that he uses for these things. remus would be surprised if sirius hasn’t had to apologize for so many such things during their relationship, but what does surprise him is when sirius goes further.

“i wasn’t thinking,” sirius says, dropping his head onto remus’ shoulder. (he doesn’t shove him away. yet.) “shouldn’t of-”

“shouldn’t of  _ what _ ?” remus fires back, in such a different tone than what has been hanging in the air all night that sirius jumps. there’s a certain kind of venom in his voice that isn’t for sirius, it’s for someone . . . something else. some other reason. sirius can’t place it. “we can’t ignore the future, sirius. we can dodge around talking about it and pretend it doesn’t matter, but it’s coming eventually.”

and then sirius realizes what it is that’s bothering him. he reaches for remus’ hand, and remus doesn’t lace his fingers back with sirius’, but he doesn’t yank his hand away. (yet.  _ yet. _ ) “when i said we could get a house together, i mean  _ together _ , remus. james will help, too, you won’t have to-”

that’s when remus pulls his hand away, and sirius is thinking  _ yet _ when he speaks again, and his tone is all sharp edges and fatigue that has worn itself into his bones. “i don’t  _ want _ james to help,” he says at first, and then sags against the cushions, “i don’t want to be running on someone else’s money. i don’t want to be-”

“remus,” sirius says slowly, and tries to take his hand again for remus to yank it away without a  _ yet _ this time, and sirius doesn’t try again, “we’re not just going to leave you after school, you know. you have friends. let them help you.”

remus says nothing, staring at a spot on the floor where the carpet frayed. sirius knows what’s going through his mind right now, he knows his brain is screaming  _ burdenburdenburden _ and won’t let him accept the bloody help, he knows he will wreck himself going it alone because he can’t bear to be some kind of trust fund of a friend and he knows it’s all bullshit.

“you know i love you, and james loves you. peter loves you, and so does lily. you’re not some kind of-”

“you can’t just  _ love _ the monster out of me, sirius!” remus exclaims, and exhales immediately after like that sentence alone has been weighing down on his chest for weeks. sirius blinks, staring, and remus doesn’t stare back, raking his fingers through his hair. “you can’t.”

when he tore up the stairs a few moments later, sirius didn’t follow him, and remus didn’t look back to check.

__

_ ( you’ve heard it all before, i play the same three chords ) _

_ ( but we still seem to forget all the words ) _

__

that night, remus had never expected sirius to follow him, but somehow it still stung that he didn’t. he doesn’t know what he’s  _ looking _ for, he doesn’t know what he wants sirius to say, he doesn’t know what he wants him to do. he doesn’t know what  _ he _ wants to do. maybe a part of him is expecting sirius to be something he’s not, for all of five minutes to convince him that it’ll be alright, but that isn’t fair. after all, sirius is young and angry, and just because he is young and angry and in love with remus lupin doesn’t mean that it’s any better.

and sirius is young and angry, but james is young and reckless, and they are both as dangerous as the other, completing some kind of circle that might be comforting to them but disastrous to anyone else.

remus throws his book bag down on the bed, wondering what it would feel like to do what he wants for once. if  _ he _ was allowed to be young and angry. if he was allowed to start fistfights, if he was allowed to plant firecrackers in people’s shoes and get caught. if he could afford to be like sirius. maybe the future wouldn’t look the way it does if he could.

because he isn’t so serene and soft, he isn’t complete of book ends and hot chocolate and soft sweaters. remus lupin is teeth and iron and white-hot anger and remus lupin is cold and dark and sharp around the edges. remus lupin is scarred and on some days, bad days, he feels a need to scar some people who push too hard. remus is young and remus is angry but remus isn’t allowed to be anything but quiet.

he thinks about whether or not he can take waking up every day of the rest of his life to a sympathetic smile and a cheque that he did nothing but be broken to deserve and decides that there’s no way he can.

__

_ ( this happens time again, two lovers turn to friends ) _

_ ( a story told that doesn’t really end ) _

__

“this isn’t working anymore.” remus says, and even though he was expecting it to come one day, sirius isn’t ready.

“what isn’t?” he notices how remus sits a space away from him on the edge of the bed and he decides it’s against his luck to move closer.

remus sighs, and wrings the hem of his sweater around his scarred hands. “this. us.”

they go in circles. they would get upset at each other, sirius would apologize- remus would have to do some apologizing, too, but he would feel too pitied, and so he’d run off instead- and then they’d start all over again the next day. maybe they should change something about it, but they didn’t have the energy, and so they simply carried out the routine.

remus knows he should start getting used to not having a routine.

sirius inhales sharply from beside him and remus can’t look. “remus,” he says slowly, and he can hear so much regret in his voice that he nearly tells him to forget it, but he can’t. he won’t. sirius is quiet for a long moment as if he’s waiting for remus to do just that, and then gives up.

“we can’t. you know we can’t.”

“what if i don’t want to know it?”

remus doesn’t have to turn to him to know the way sirius is looking at him. he’ll have this look in his eyes that defies the gods themselves, because if sirius black doesn’t want to accept something, he won’t. the thing is, he knows he’ll accept it for remus, in the end. and he doesn’t actively use it to his advantage, but it always works out that way, doesn’t it?

“look,” sirius wrings his hands out of the corner of remus’ eye, and when his fingers twitch he pulls them apart to grip the bedspread instead. “if this is about what i said the other night, i didn’t mean to make you upset, i just can’t sit and watch you-”

“no.”

there’s a terse silence that doesn’t let up no matter how many moments they give it, and so they break it instead.

“no?”

remus sighs, and crosses his arms across his stomach instead. still he doesn’t look at sirius, and silently, sirius is begging him to, but he won’t. “it’s not about that. it’s about everything.”

sirius is quiet. he’s the quietest remus has ever known him to be, he is even quieter than he was at remus’ mother’s funeral, he’s quieter than after lily yelled at him for being jealous of her when he insinuated she was taking up all james’ time. sirius is not a quiet person in any sense, but remus can barely hear him breathing, and he wants to turn around so he’ll make some kind of noise but he won’t, he  _ can’t. _

“everything?”

“everything.”

and then sirius stands up. now is remus’ last chance, he can grab his hand and make him sit back down and pretend like talking will fix it, he can look up at him and tell him he didn’t mean it, but _he won’t,_ ** _he can’t,_** and so he doesn’t. suddenly sirius disappears from beside him, and remus can practically _hear_ him staring at his back when he hesitates at the door to their dorm, and then he’s gone with a click of the doorknob and remus doesn’t know if he’s done the right thing.

that was necessary, wasn’t it? they can’t keep pretending everything will be fine. this school is like a shield, protecting them from the outside, their lives that hate them both and the world that wishes to crush them under its boot once they leave. they  _ had _ to stop it, because there’s no other way where it doesn’t end up hurting more than it does right now, there’s no end to this story they were weaving where it ended up okay.

it was necessary, but remus’ cheeks are wet, and he feels like they’ll never be dry again, and he wraps his pillow around his head and clamps his hands over his ears so that he might not hear the deafening sound of his own heart breaking into a million pieces.

__

_ ( baby, don’t you worry ) _

_ ( i’m not crazy, i’m just crazy for you ) _

__  
  



End file.
